Drink A Day Linked To Cancer In Women
by Joanne Silberner
A glass of wine.
A new study indicates that drinking up to seven glasses of alcohol in a week increases a woman's risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. iStockphoto.com
NPR.org, February 25, 2009 · Moderate alcohol use increases the risk of cancers of the breast and certain other types of cancer, according to a new study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
But the study raises more questions than it answers.
British researchers from Oxford University analyzed health information on nearly 1.3 million women in the United Kingdom. Most of them were moderate drinkers, defined as having fewer than seven drinks per week.
According to their analysis, if 1,000 women drank an average of one drink a day, there would be an extra 11 cases of breast cancer in the group. The breast cancer link has been found in several other studies and is generally accepted. The study also found moderate drinking raised the risk of cancers of the mouth, rectum and liver.
The report was accompanied by an editorial stating that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption for women.
The publication has led to a bit of a media frenzy. The Washington Post reported that "sipping pinot noir might not be such a good idea after all." And the BBC said, "One drink may be one too many."
But epidemiologists are more circumspect. They point to other studies showing that moderate drinking reduces the risk of another major killer, heart disease.
Dr. JoAnn Manson was co-author of a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1995. She and her colleagues looked at what happened to 86,000 women over time. They found that a drink a day lowered the overall death rate, mostly by lowering the risk of heart disease.
Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, says the new study helps women make more informed choices about alcohol use. But, she says, it shouldn't be a cause for alarm.
"A woman with a high risk of breast cancer and an average risk of heart disease may want to avoid alcohol," she says. "But a woman with a high risk of heart disease and an average risk of breast cancer might find the trade-off acceptable."
Manson and other epidemiologists are hoping the Oxford University researchers will publish more information, including the group's overall death rate and whether smokers are more prone to alcohol-related cancers.
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